Trust
by Absintheaddict
Summary: Spoilers for 6th and 7th season. Reid's thoughts about his current situation. Placed at the beginning at the 7th season.


**Author's Note:** This is my first published Criminal minds fanfiction so be gentle. I'd like to thank Reidfanatic who beta'd this piece of work. Thank you for your input and I hope you enjoy the final outcome. English is not my native language so any errors concerning that are my fault only. I would love some feedback so constructive critisism is always welcome. Please review

Intellectually, he understood he shouldn't be mad at them –not JJ, not Hotch nor Emily- for concealing the truth for seven months. He shouldn't be mad at Emily, because having her back was so overwhelming that he avoided thinking about his previous grief altogether. He shouldn't be mad at Hotch, because he was the unit chief and he had had to make that impossible decision that, in reality, might have saved Emily's life. He shouldn't be mad at Jennifer because she had the bureaucratic connections that facilitated Emily's exfiltration overseas, providing her with means to survive during those hard months of pretending to be dead.

But he was beyond pissed. He was beyond hurt.

Trust, did not come easily for Reid. When he was younger, he used to believe that trusting someone was a given, and that everyone would return his trust in kind. How wrong he'd been.

He clearly remembered the first time he'd realized his beliefs where as true as being able to diminish the quantity of entropy throughout the universe. He had been at the university, completing his degree in mathematics and he had a friend named Marcus. They were really close friends, because Marcus was an only child raised by his uncle due to drug issues within his family and Reid recognized him as a kindred spirit. One day, Reid had decided to share the story of his mother's illness and his father's abandonment with him. His friend responded as he'd thought he would. He didn't judge him and, in some way, he commiserated with the fact that he was more alone than Marcus could ever be. Spencer was content, he had found his place in the world and nothing could ever beat that feeling.

Nobody really knew the story behind his looking for more than one degree apart from mathematics. They all thought it was because of his natural disposition towards learning everything. But really it was all because of one event:

_They'd been looking for thesis advisors and ended up at the door of the same teacher, a brilliant professor who was looking for people working in set theory, which they had both enjoyed it in their courses. When they'd both gotten there, the teacher clearly showed more interest in working with Spencer than Marcus. But they both got accepted and being just enough for both of them–or so Spencer thought-they returned to the dorm. Spencer started to notice some distance between himself and Marcus, but he attributed it to the amount of time they were spending writing their thesis proposals. A week after the incident he got an e-mail from the professor who wanted to meet him to have a talk. Spencer replied with the time he was available. The day the meeting was scheduled he arrived at the teachers' office just in time to see Marcus exit the place with a pleased smile on his face._

"_Some issues have been brought to my attention, a situation which may affect my decision regarding us working together," was the phrase with which the teacher started their conversation. And then his perceptions about human relationships had been torn and destroyed._

_He really couldn't remember to this day the exact conversation between both of them. Eidetic memory only works really well with reading. But he could recall words such as "unstable" "disturbed" and "disabled" were among them, and at the end of their conversation the only two things apparent to Spencer were that he had no thesis advisor (because apparently he was so impaired by his family's illnesses that the teacher couldn't find the energy to put up with him), and that pleased smile on his so called friend's face was related to the fact that out of nowhere the professor had wanted nothing to do with him._

_He'd been crushed. He'd gone back to the dorm, which they shared, and tried to confront his only true friend up to that day. What Marcus answered was embedded to his memory:_

"_You think that I would like to share the attention from that gifted mind with you, a creep, and unbalanced know it all with psychos in his family? Don't get me wrong, I get the hardships you had to go through in your life. But that doesn't change the fact that you… disgust …me. And the thought of putting up with the professor always speaking highly of you and ignoring me was a scenario to daunting to let happen. So, I told them about you, all of the teachers. So, good luck trying to find someone who will put up with you."_

_And that was that. Marcus had decided to move somewhere else and Reid was left in a hole so dark that he thought he would drown in despair._

_Marcus had been wrong about the number of people who still were still willing to work with him, and didn't seem to be affected with the new information provided by his ex-friend. Although, many had wanted to take advantage of his "disability" with promises of "protecting" his work (more like stealing), like professor Kaitou. Other people, like Professor Gabriela Wolf, who specialized in K-theory, wanted him just out of pity. And that was why he had such difficulty finding a thesis advisor. He couldn't abide by either kind of people._

_Luckily for him, there'd been a teacher who hadn't minded his background, or his disability, or whatever they had called it, and was working in something relatively new to him: fluid mechanics. When he'd asked the professor about his opinion on the substance of Reid's confidence that Marcus had spread around, the man had answered, "Well, you could be blinded by appearances or genetics, but it's the same to me. Just as long as you do your job, you are no more unstable than the student with a heavy course load."_

_He'd had a hard time adjusting. But Professor Ernest Smith was an even tempered, passionate man with a no-nonsense attitude that had gotten to Spencer. It was then, when dealing with non-Newtonian fluids and their applications within the industry, that he found a new love for engineering he hadn't experienced before. _

Ever since then he'd had a hard time trusting just anybody. Many may have attributed it to his issues of abandonment but no one really knew about what the last straw had been that had made him so distrustful, or so reluctant to share his problems with friends or co-workers.

And yet he had confided in them. And therein lay his fury. He'd allowed himself to forget about Marcus. About those hurtful words he'd said that day when he found out about humans' natural instinct to hurt other people.

And now he was mad at Hotch, for those grief counseling sessions he held at his office, where he filled him with platitudes and lies to get him to do his work as well as he could. Their walking encyclopedia, filled with the facts just needed to solve some of the most grueling cases.

He was mad at Emily, for allowing herself to be involved in an undercover operation by Ian Doyle in the first place. He was mad at her for not confiding in him, even after he confessed about his headaches to her. He was pissed that she was dead and now she wasn't and he didn't know how to talk to her again.

He was especially angry at Jennifer. He was angry because of her leaving the team even if it hadn't actually been her fault. He was angry at her for coming back just when they'd lost Emily. He was angry she was the one to take Emily so far away from them. He was so angry at her because he'd laid himself bare, he'd shared his deepest feelings of despair with her and she'd known the truth all that time.

But most of all, more than his anger at his teammates, he was furious with himself; because intellectually, he understood what they'd done, emotionally not so much. But in his case, rationally he couldn't understand his forgetfulness, his stupidity, and the fact that he'd forgiven them; because they are his family.

But to trust them again? That is another matter.


End file.
